Share this:

Enrico Fermi - Biographical

Enrico
Fermi was born in Rome on 29th September, 1901, the son of
Alberto Fermi, a Chief Inspector of the Ministry of
Communications, and Ida de Gattis. He attended a local grammar
school, and his early aptitude for mathematics and physics was
recognized and encouraged by his father's colleagues, among them
A. Amidei. In 1918, he won a fellowship of the Scuola Normale
Superiore of Pisa. He spent four years at the University of Pisa,
gaining his doctor's degree in physics in 1922, with Professor
Puccianti.

Soon afterwards, in 1923, he was awarded a scholarship from the
Italian Government and spent some months with Professor Max Born in Göttingen.
With a Rockefeller Fellowship, in 1924, he moved to Leyden to
work with P. Ehrenfest, and later that same year he returned to
Italy to occupy for two years (1924-1926) the post of Lecturer in
Mathematical Physics and Mechanics at the University of
Florence.

In 1926, Fermi discovered the statistical laws, nowadays known as
the «Fermi statistics», governing the particles subject
to Pauli's exclusion principle (now referred to as
«fermions», in contrast with «bosons» which
obey the Bose-Einstein statistics).

In 1927, Fermi was elected Professor of Theoretical Physics at
the University of Rome (a post which he retained until 1938, when
he - immediately after the receipt of the Nobel Prize - emigrated
to America, primarily to escape Mussolini's fascist
dictatorship).

During the early years of his career in Rome he occupied himself
with electrodynamic problems and with theoretical investigations
on various spectroscopic phenomena. But a capital turning-point
came when he directed his attention from the outer electrons
towards the atomic nucleus itself. In 1934, he evolved the
ß-decay theory, coalescing previous work on radiation theory
with Pauli's idea of the neutrino. Following the discovery by
Curie and Joliot of artificial radioactivity (1934), he
demonstrated that nuclear transformation occurs in almost every
element subjected to neutron bombardment. This work resulted in
the discovery of slow neutrons that same year, leading to the
discovery of nuclear fission and the production of elements lying
beyond what was until then the Periodic Table.

In 1938, Fermi was without doubt the greatest expert on neutrons,
and he continued his work on this topic on his arrival in the
United States, where he was soon appointed Professor of Physics
at Columbia
University, N.Y. (1939-1942).

Upon the discovery of fission, by Hahn and Strassmann early in
1939, he immediately saw the possibility of emission of secondary
neutrons and of a chain reaction. He proceeded to work with
tremendous enthusiasm, and directed a classical series of
experiments which ultimately led to the atomic pile and the first
controlled nuclear chain reaction. This took place in Chicago on
December 2, 1942 - on a squash court situated beneath
Chicago's stadium. He subsequently played an important part in
solving the problems connected with the development of the first
atomic bomb (He was one of the leaders of the team of physicists
on the Manhattan Project for the development of nuclear energy
and the atomic bomb.)

In 1944, Fermi became an American citizen, and at the end of the war
(1946) he accepted a professorship at the Institute for Nuclear
Studies of the University of Chicago, a position which he held
until his untimely death in 1954. There he turned his attention
to high-energy physics, and led investigations into the
pion-nucleon interaction.

During the last years of his life Fermi occupied himself with the
problem of the mysterious origin of cosmic rays, thereby
developing a theory, according to which a universal magnetic
field - acting as a giant accelerator - would account for the
fantastic energies present in the cosmic ray particles.

Professor Fermi was the author of numerous papers both in
theoretical and experimental physics. His most important
contributions were:

"Sulla quantizzazione del gas perfetto monoatomico", Rend.
Accad. Naz. Lincei, 1935 (also in Z. Phys., 1936),
concerning the foundations of the statistics of the electronic
gas and of the gases made of particles that obey the Pauli
Principle.

Several papers published in Rend. Accad. Naz. Lincei,
1927-28, deal with the statistical model of the atom
(Thomas-Fermi atom model) and give a semiquantitative method for
the calculation of atomic properties. A resumé of this work
was published by Fermi in the volume: Quantentheorie und
Chemie, edited by H. Falkenhagen, Leipzig, 1928.

"Uber die magnetischen Momente der AtomKerne", Z. Phys.,
1930, is a quantitative theory of the hyperfine structures of
spectrum lines. The magnetic moments of some nuclei are deduced
therefrom.

"Tentativo di una teoria dei raggi ß", Ricerca
Scientifica, 1933 (also Z. Phys., 1934) proposes a
theory of the emission of ß-rays, based on the hypothesis,
first proposed by Pauli, of the existence of the neutrino.

The Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Fermi for his work on
the artificial radioactivity produced by neutrons, and for
nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons. The first paper
on this subject "Radioattività indotta dal bombardamento di
neutroni" was published by him in Ricerca Scientifica,
1934. All the work is collected in the following papers by
himself and various collaborators: "Artificial radioactivity
produced by neutron bombardment", Proc. Roy. Soc., 1934
and 1935; "On the absorption and diffusion of slow neutrons",
Phys. Rev., 1936. The theoretical problems connected with
the neutron are discussed by Fermi in the paper "Sul moto dei
neutroni lenti", Ricerca Scientfica, 1936.

His Collected Papers are being published by a Committee
under the Chairmanship of his friend and former pupil, Professor E. Segrè (Nobel Prize
winner 1959, with O. Chamberlain, for the discovery of the
antiproton).

Fermi was member of several academies and learned societies in
Italy and abroad (he was early in his career, in 1929, chosen
among the first 30 members of the Royal Academy of Italy).

As lecturer he was always in great demand (he has also given
several courses at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; and
Stanford
University, Calif.). He was the first recipient of a special
award of $50,000 - which now bears his name - for work on the
atom.

Professor Fermi married Laura Capon in 1928. They had one son
Giulio and one daughter Nella. His favourite pastimes were
walking, mountaineering, and winter sports.

This autobiography/biography was written
at the time of the award and first
published in the book series Les
Prix Nobel.
It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.